Top 400 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people’s thoughts.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

352. “Born as I was the citizen of a free state and a member of its sovereign body, the very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affairs, however little influence my voice may have in them.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

353. “It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give to both sexes those fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

354. “I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

355. “From this it follows that, the larger the State, the less the liberty.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

356. “It has always pleased me to read while eating if I have no companion; it gives me the society I lack. I devour alternately a page and a mouthful; it is as though my book were dining with me.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

357. “In the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be good is good, what I feel to be bad is bad.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

358. “The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know, without asking what a child is capable of learning.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

359. “To try to conceal our own heart is a bad means to read that of others.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

360. “I found that stealing and being beaten went together, and in some way made up a single condition, and that by fulfilling the part of that condition that depended on me, I could leave the care of the other part to my master. From this idea, I set out to steal more calmly than before. I said to myself, “What will come of it in the end? I will be beaten. So be it: that’s what I am made for.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

361. “Never in a monarchy can the opulence of an individual put him above the prince; but, in a republic, it can easily put him above the laws. Then the government no longer has force, and the rich are always the true sovereign.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

362. “The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

363. “Toda la diferencia consiste en que, en una familia, el amor paternal recompensa al padre de los cuidados que prodiga a sus hijos, en tanto que en el Estado el placer de mandar suple el amor que el jefe no siente por sus gobernados.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

364. “Why is man alone subject to becoming an imbecile? Is it not that he thereby returns to his primitive state, and that, while the animal which has acquired nothing and which also has nothing to lose, always retains its instinct, man, in losing through old age or other accidents all that his perfectibility has enabled him to acquire, thus falls even lower than the animal itself?”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

365. “With the poet, it is gold and silver, but with the philosopher it is iron and corn, which have civilized men, and ruined mankind.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

366. “Sometimes my reveries end in meditation, but more often my meditations end in reverie and during these wanderings, my soul roams and takes flight through the universe on the wings of the imagination and ecstasies that exceed all other pleasures.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

367. “Emerging society gave way to the most horrible state of war; since the human race, vilified and desolated, was no longer able to retrace its steps or give up the unfortunate acquisitions it had made, and since it labored only toward its shame by abusing the faculties that honor it, it brought itself to the brink of its ruin. Horrified by the newness of the ill, both the poor man and the rich man hope to flee from wealth, hating what they once had prayed for.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

368. “Savage man, once he has eaten, is at peace with all of nature and the friend of all his fellow humans. Is.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

369. “The mind has its needs, as does the body. The needs of the latter are the foundations of society; the needs of the former make it pleasant.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

370. “Happiness has no particular outward sign to discover itself by; we must be able to view the heart before we can be certain who are truly happy; but contentment is to be read in the eyes, the conversation, the accent, the manner, and seems to communicate itself to him that perceives it.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

371. “I can understand how it is that city-dwellers, who see only walls and streets and crimes, have so little religion. But I cannot understand how those who live in the country, and the solitary especially, can be lacking in faith. How is it that their souls are not raised in ecstasy a hundred times a day to the Author of the wonders that strike their eyes?”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

372. “War, then, is not a relation between men, but between states; in war individuals are enemies wholly by chance, not as men, not even as citizens, but only as soldiers; not as member of their country, but only as its defenders. In a word, a state can have as an enemy only another state, not men, becuase there can be no real relations between things possessing different intrinsic natures.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

373. “Self-love, which concerns itself only with ourselves, is content to satisfy our own needs; but selfishness, which is always comparing self with others, is never satisfied and never can be; for this feeling, which prefers ourselves to others, requires that they should prefer us to themselves, which is impossible.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

374. “One always wants what is good for oneself, but one does not always see it. The people is never corrupted, but it is often fooled, and only then does it appear to want what is bad.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

375. “In instinct alone, man had everything he needed in order to live in the state of nature; in a cultivated reason, he has only what he needs to live in society.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

376. “IN order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations, a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

377. “Before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and tests the ground to see if it can support the weight; in the same way the wise legislator doesn’t start by laying down his good laws but by investigating whether the populace they are intended for is in a condition to receive them.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

378. “The great secret of education is to use exercise of mind and body as relaxation one to the other.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

379. “There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good. The State has no right to put to death, even for the sake of making an example, any one whom it can leave alive without danger.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

380. “No hay derecho a matar al enemigo sino en el caso de no poderle hacer esclavo. Luego, el derecho de hacerle esclavo no viene del derecho de matarle. Por lo tanto, es un cambio inicuo hacerle comprar a costa de su libertad una vida sobre la cual nadie tiene derecho.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

381. “In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

382. “I may be asked whether I am a prince or a legislator that I should be writing about politics. I answer no: and indeed that is my reason for doing so. If I were a prince or a legislator I should not waste my time saying what ought to be done; I should do it or keep silent.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

383. “I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and that I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be attentive.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

384. “Wise men, if they try to speak their language to the common herd instead of its own, cannot possibly make themselves understood.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

385. “Respetad a la infancia y no os deis prisa en juzgarla ni para el bien ni para el mal. Dejad.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

386. “The end of this speech cruelly belied the brilliant hopes given to me by the beginning. “What, always a lackey?” I said to myself with a bitter disdain that confidence soon erased. I felt myself too little made for that place to fear that they would leave me there.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

387. “It was requisite for men to be thought what they really were not. To be and to appear became two very different things, and from this distinction sprang pomp and knavery, and all the vices which form their train.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

388. “It makes me feel very much what I believe I have said in some work, that remorse sleeps during a prosperous fate and grows sour in adversity.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

389. “If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to live forever? Hence, if we wish to form a lasting institution, let us not think about making it eternal. In order to succeed we should not attempt the impossible, or flatter ourselves that we are giving the work of men a solidity that does not belong to human things.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

390. “A man who lives ten years for himself and others without the help of doctors lives more for himself and others than one who spends thirty years as their victim.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

391. “Above all he is jealous of his own self-respect; this is his most valued possession and it would be a real loss to him were he to acquire the respect of others at the expense of his own.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

392. “As a result of quarrels, blows, furtive and poorly chosen readings, my disposition became taciturn, wild, my head began to be spoiled, and I lived like a true werewolf.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

393. “There is, I feel, an age at which an individual man would want to stop. You will seek the age at which you would want your species to have stopped. Dissatisfied with your present state for reasons that portend even greater grounds for dissatisfaction for your unhappy posterity, perhaps you would like to be able to go backwards in time.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

394. “My lack of success with women has always come from loving them too much.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

395. “Allowing that nature intended we should always enjoy good health, I dare almost affirm that a state of reflection is a state against nature, and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

396. “Your beginning,” he said to me, “is the rule of what will be required of you: seek to behave so as to do more afterwards, but watch out never to do less.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

397. “Wees minnaar van een ziel.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

398. “El verdadero objeto de mis confesiones es hacer comprender exactamente mi interior en todas las situaciones.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

399. “You must give your own time, attention, affection, your very self; for whatever you do, people always perceive that your money is not you.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

400. “Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau